Thursday, 20 April 2017

WHEEL OF TIME TV series picked up by Sony

Sony Television Pictures have confirmed that they are the company who purchased the Wheel of Time TV rights last year and are now actively developing the project for television.

The saga of the Wheel of Time TV rights is long and complex. Suffice to say, a company named Red Eagle Productions attempted to get a film or TV show of The Wheel of Time made for over a decade before their option was due to expire in early 2015. To keep the rights, they self-funded a brief TV pilot based on the prologue to The Eye of the World, the first book in the series, resulting in a legal tussle with the Robert Jordan Estate. Last year we were told this tussle had been resolved and the TV project was moving forwards with an unspecified production partner, now revealed to be Sony.

So far no TV network has picked up the series, but there will likely be keen interest from a number of sources. HBO, I am informed, are not remotely in the running, preferring to develop series of this magnitude in-house and are also not interested in developing internal competition to Game of Thrones and its rumoured, early-in-gestation spin-off series.

The network most likely to show the series is AMC. They have been developing an enviable portfolio of genre programming, spearheaded by the ratings-destroying The Walking Dead, and have previously worked with Sony Television on Preacher, Better Call Saul and, of course, Breaking Bad. They are also rumoured to be the frontrunners to air the Dark Tower TV series (a prequel spin-off from the forthcoming Idris Elba movie), also in development with Sony. The main concern over AMC being involved is that they are infamously frugal, with even the massively popular Walking Dead made on a relative shoestring budget (for its scale) of about $3.2 million per episode. The Wheel of Time would comfortably require $5 million per episode at the start and a lot more later on, which AMC would seem less likely to stump up for. However, AMC likely want their own Game of Thrones-challenging fantasy show and would know that this would come with a much higher price tag.

Starz are also likely a strong candidate. They are more generous with the pursestrings and have likewise worked with Sony Television on their breakout success, Outlander. Showtime are also possible, as Sony has worked with them on Masters of Sex and The Tudors, but are perhaps less likely to stump up the large budget required.

An intriguing possibility is FX. FX and Sony previously worked together on The Shield, Rescue Me and Justified. FX is probably underrated in the TV stakes, but their portfolio of shows is far more impressive than might be first thought: in addition to the above, FX have also produced Sons of Anarchy, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Archer, American Horror Story, Legion, Atlanta, The Americans and Fargo (the latter two both strongly claiming the title of Best Show on TV). FX also showed Red Eagle's self-funded pilot back in 2015. Although that was a self-funded advert with no creative input from FX, FX did pick up a lot of queries about the project and obviously would be aware of the ratings and other feedback.

More tantalising would be a collaboration with an online streaming service. Sony have worked with Amazon on Mad Dogs and The Last Tycoon and with Netflix on The Get Down. Both Amazon and Netflix would likely loosen the pursestrings for The Wheel of Time (Netflix is spending $7 million per episode on Altered Carbon, and that novel is all but obscure compared to WoT) and Sony are likely interested in exploring the streaming space further.

Sony have confirmed that they have already hired the writer and showrunner for the series. Rafe Judkins entered the Hollywood sphere in 2005 as a contestant on Survivor before becoming a writer. He has since worked on The 4400, Chuck, My Own Worst Enemy, Hemlock Grove and Agents of SHIELD. Judkins frequently collaborates with screenwriter Lauren LeFranc, so it may be possible she will also write for the show.

The next step will be finding a network partner and beginning the process of developing scripts and casting. I suspect it will be 2019, at the earliest, before we see The Wheel of Time on TV. But although it will be a while before we see Rand, Loial and Nynaeve's Braid on TV, at least we now have a beginning.

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7 comments:

Wow! Great news. I'm pulling for Netflix! Actually in the middle of a re-read, my first since AMoL came out and probably my last ever of WoT. I have always loved this series, but I didn't care for the way Sanderson treated it (I'm not sure I can even re-read his books when I get to them they put me off that much the first time around) and now that I'm older I even find many sections of the earlier books difficult to get through. I can only take so much braid tugging and constant idiotic behavior. I'm looking at you Nynaeve, Elayne, and Egwene.

There is so much material here that they can do almost anything they want with it, IMO. I think the first several novels (probably up through The Shadow Rising) would make great TV basically as-is, just adapted more for the TV medium. It isn't really until after that that the series gets overly complex and a little bloated. I'd say just start with Eye of the World, make it interesting for TV, and see if it takes off. If the show's a success, they can worry about the middle books when they get there.

My dream setup for this show is probably something akin to the way The Walking dead works. Split a season into two 8 episode parts. Then each part would basically be one book. I know that may not work out perfectly as some books will turn into fewer episodes than others due to the pace of everything, but something like that would give enough episodes to do it justice without stretching out the series longer than it should. Also, it would be really cool to get two doses of content a year.

My other hope is that success of the series could cause other planned Wheel of Time books to be written that Jordan was not able to get to.

This will probably be Controversial Opinion but I think one of the ways this series can differentiate itself from the Crowd is to play up its Diversity of races.The World of Wheel of time is such a mix of different Races and Cultures.If they Play it up the show would certainly look different from your standard european Fantasy.

The Diversity of the Wheel of time world should allow them to Racebend without it contradicting the Stories.

I would love to see Rand and the Aiel played by an Indian Actors and Actreses.Just Dye their Hair red.